


Three's Company

by Fallynleaf



Series: Winging It [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Asexual Sam Wilson, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, First Time, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 08:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13700820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallynleaf/pseuds/Fallynleaf
Summary: So, Sam and Bucky are together. Now what?





	Three's Company

**Author's Note:**

> It's been over a year and a half since I last watched Civil War, but I finally wrote the sequel to Two's A Crowd that I'd wanted to write since the beginning. I finished it just barely in time to post for International Fanworks Day!
> 
> I'm not quite sure why I decided to write that first fic in present tense, but I've made my bed, and now I have to lie in it.

They fight over whose room to use, because of course they do. Sam loses. Or perhaps he wins? Either way, Sam and Bucky are in Sam’s room, sprawled out on a frankly gigantic mattress. The room is simply but pleasantly decorated, functional and elegant, except without many of Sam’s personal belongings, it demonstrates very little of his personality.

“Never thought I’d say this, but this bed is too big,” Sam says. He looks at Bucky over the miles (several feet) of blankets and mattress that separate them. “C’mon, get over here.”

“No,” Bucky says. He closes his eyes and leans back.

Sam growls. He curls his fingers around the corner of his pillow. Then he whacks Bucky in the face with it.

When the pillow falls away, Bucky’s eyes are open and narrowed. He retaliates quick, bringing his pillow up and into Sam’s face in one fluid motion.

“Oh, it’s on,” Sam mutters.

The resulting pillow fight is a brief but brutal skirmish. It ends when Bucky’s pillow—the sole casualty—rains its feathery entrails down on them as Sam and Bucky both giggle and wear matching goofy grins.

Sam looks down at Bucky, who lies splayed out underneath him, and then Sam leans down and brushes Bucky’s hair aside and kisses him.

Bucky’s hand comes up, warm and steady, wrapping around Sam, pulling him closer.

They’ve gotten better at this. The kissing part. The rest of the _thing_ they’ve got going on between them is still a little rough at the edges.

After the kiss is over, Sam stretches out beside Bucky, one arm draped over him, tracing abstract lines into Bucky’s skin. Bucky is staring at him, his expression soft, but indecipherable.

“So, what’s next?” Bucky says.

“Don’t know,” Sam says. He smirks. “I’m kind of winging it.”

Sam’s head falls against the mattress as his pillow is abruptly pulled out from under him. Then the pillow hits him in the face.

Bucky lies back down, tucking Sam’s pillow under his own head.

“I _was_ going to share,” Sam mutters.

“There are plenty of pillows to go around,” Bucky says. He’s right. The bed is like a goddamn hotel bed. Way too many pillows for a single normal human being.

Sam has always hated hotel beds.

He leans down and retrieves a pillow from the floor.

 

* * *

 

Bucky sleeps heavier on Sam’s bed than he did on the couch. Sometimes, he dreams. His dreams are never good ones.

Sam’s lost count of how many times he’s woken to the sound of Bucky’s screaming. There’s always that moment of fear when Sam wakes Bucky up and Bucky isn’t quite sure where he is, or who he’s with, and his whole body tenses up like a coil ready to spring, and Sam has a flash of awareness that this is what it means to bed down with an assassin, and then Bucky comes back to himself and relaxes, and both of them are shaking as they wrap their arms around each other in nonverbal reassurance.

“Maybe my room would be better,” Bucky says, once, after it has happened enough times to become a pattern. “Then, if he happens to hear—”

“No,” Sam says. He shakes his head. Puts his foot down. “You’re staying,” he says.

Steve is a can of worms that neither one of them wants to open. They can hardly explain, well, whatever  _this_ is, to themselves, much less to anyone else. It isn’t that Sam thinks that Steve would _disapprove_ , he just doesn’t want it to change anything between the three of them.

But Sam also isn’t going to let Steve get in the way of him and Bucky. Somehow, against all odds and reason, Sam and Bucky have managed to forge this thing between them, and now that they have it, they’re holding onto it tightly and selfishly.

Not that anyone could tell from how they interact with each other during the day. When Steve is there, they hardly even look at each other. When Steve isn’t there, they snark at each other and generally get in each other’s way.

Bucky spends so much time getting in Sam’s space during the day, but at night, he more or less keeps his distance.

The only exceptions are when they’re kissing, or when Bucky has a nightmare. Then, for a short time, the distance between them will narrow to nothing.

And, for how little Sam cares about sex, he sure does love kissing Bucky.

He loves the tousled look to Bucky’s hair, the way Bucky always reaches up to hold him, the look on Bucky’s face when he pulls away, dazed and awed, before the rest of the world catches up to him.

One night, after they kiss, Sam says: “You’ve never had sex with a man before, have you?”

Bucky shakes his head. “No,” he says.

“Ever wanted to try it?” Sam asks.

Bucky just looks at Sam, saying nothing.

“If you want, the two of us could...” Sam trails off. Sex still doesn’t sound appealing, but if it’s something that Bucky wants, he’ll at least give it a shot.

“Not if you’re only doing it for me,” Bucky says. He lays back and closes his eyes.

“I want to do it,” Sam says. “I want to do it for you. And also for me,” he adds. “I want to do it for _us_.”

Bucky stares up at Sam, deliberating it. “Okay,” he says. “But you’re on top.”

 

* * *

 

They both have to do a little research, first. That’s okay. It gives them both time to back out if they decide they don’t want to do this.

And then they’re in bed together, except this time it’s _different_ , and neither of them quite know how to start.

“Okay, so, we’re supposed to—” Sam says.

“Yeah,” Bucky says.

They look at each other.

Bucky moves to take off his shirt.

Sam starts to get undressed, too. As soon as he pulls his shirt over his head, Bucky’s lips are on his.

They fall back onto the bed. There’s more skin-to-skin contact than usual, and Sam shivers with it. A good shiver.

“Okay?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

They move together, against each other, and then Sam is _inside_ of Bucky, thrusting into him. He’s lost in Bucky’s eyes, in the soft warmth of them, in the look of trust that Bucky wears, stripped down to bare vulnerability.

This is as close as they can get. As close as two people can be to sharing the same physical space.

Bucky comes with a gasp, his eyelids fluttering. Sam follows shortly afterward. It’s not his first orgasm, but it’s the first one he shared with anyone else.

Exhausted, Sam falls next to Bucky on the bed, covered in sweat, and sticky with cum.

Bucky turns and stares at him, relaxed but alert.

“Was it what you expected?” Sam asks.

Bucky gives a loose, half-hearted shrug.

“Was it good?” Sam asks.

Bucky breaks into a smile. “Yeah,” he says. “How was it for you?”

Sam thinks about it. It wasn’t unpleasant. There were some parts of it he actually quite liked. “Better than I thought it would be, honestly,” he says. “I could do it again.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” Bucky says.

“I want to if you want to,” Sam says.

“Okay,” Bucky says.

He falls asleep, after that.

Sam is still glad that they did it, but as he looks over at Bucky asleep in his bed, he knows that sex won’t fix it. Won’t fix whatever is causing the gap between them. It’s never that easy.

 

* * *

 

Steve almost catches them, once. Not having sex. Just sharing a bed. Sam comes back to his room—expecting Bucky to meet him there shortly—and Steve is just _there_. A statuesque silhouette in his doorway.

“Steve?” Sam says.

Steve turns around. “Can I talk to you about something?” he asks.

“Yeah, of course,” Sam says. He glances down the hallway, half hoping to see Bucky so that he can warn him off before he enters the room.

The hallway is empty.

Sam walks into his room and sits down on the edge of his bed. He tries not to think about him and Bucky, sharing that bed. Not while Steve is standing right there.

“It’s about Bucky,” Steve says.

Sam stiffens. Makes an effort not to break out in a cold sweat. _Does Steve know?_

“I know the two of you don’t really get along—” Steve says. Sam relaxes. _Nope. He doesn’t know_. “—But have you noticed anything… off about him lately?”.

“Like, ‘off,’ how?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know!” Steve says. “That’s what’s frustrating. I think something’s going on that he’s not telling me, and I’m worried about him, Sam.”

Sam knows at least _one_ thing is going on with Bucky that he isn’t telling Steve, but he gets the sense that that isn’t what this is about.

“Wait, by something going on, do you mean…” Sam starts, his voice growing quiet. “Brainwashed assassin stuff?” he finishes.

Steve is silent. “I don’t know,” he says, finally.

Bucky never shows up that night. For the first time in a long time, Sam sleeps alone. He sleeps terribly. After snatching a couple hours of fitful rest, he wakes from a nightmare. It’s the first nightmare he’s had since the whole thing with Bucky had started. Five guesses what the nightmare is about.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Bucky is scarce. Sam looks for him, but pretends that’s not what he’s doing. _He’s avoiding me,_ Sam realizes. He can’t figure out why. The only aberration in their relationship lately had been the night Steve had talked to Sam.

Sam is deliberating whether or not he should ask Steve about it when he runs into the guy in the hallway.

“Steve?” Sam asks. Steve seems distracted, his mouth etched into a small frown. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Bucky,” Steve says. “They’re putting him back under.”

Sam’s body grows cold. “They’re _what_?” he asks.

“Cryostasis. Until they find a way to reverse his brainwashing.”

“And you didn’t stop them?” Sam asks.

“ _He_ wanted it,” Steve says. “It was his idea.”

There are a lot of things that Sam wants to say, but he swallows them all down. “Where is he?” he asks, his voice clipped.

Steve leads him to a room with a hospital bed and a cryostasis chamber in the corner. Bucky is in a white undershirt, sitting on the bed. He looks up when they enter, meeting Sam’s eyes.

Sam is pissed. “And you didn’t even think to say goodbye?” he asks.

“Thought it would be better if I just…”

“Left?”

“Well, yeah,” Bucky says. “Didn’t want to fight about it.”

Sam looks over at Steve, and finds him talking to T’Challa. Sam turns back towards Bucky. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says, his voice quiet.

“Yeah, I do,” Bucky says.

“Why?”

“Because I can’t trust my own mind,” Bucky says. “And no one else can trust it, either. Going back under is the best thing for everybody.”

“You overheard us, didn’t you?” Sam asks. “Me and Steve.”

Bucky looks up at him. “You were right. Until I get this stuff out of my head, there’ll always be that possibility. It’s not your fault. Just something I was already thinking about.”

“There’s got to be another way,” Sam says.

“Well, unless someone can get into my mind—” Bucky starts.

“Someone _can_ do that,” Sam says, interrupting. He has an idea. It’s an insane idea, and there’s no guarantee that it’ll work, but it’s an idea. “We have the goddamn Scarlet Witch on our side.”

 

* * *

 

Wanda agrees to try it.

“I think I can send someone else into his mind,” she says. “And maybe, you can help him undo what was done to him.” She looks at Steve as she speaks.

Steve lies down beside Bucky. Wanda stands over them, hands outstretched. Steve and Bucky close their eyes. Reddish energy begins to flow from Wanda’s hands into their heads.

Sam grips the arm of his chair, his grasp tight as a vice. He forces himself to ease up, knowing that he’s probably going to be here awhile.

 

* * *

 

For a long time, Sam watches them. Nothing perceptible happens. Just Steve and Bucky lying down with their eyes closed, and Wanda standing unmoving between them, concentrating on her magic. Eventually, Sam’s chair starts to dig into his behind, and he starts suppressing the urge to get up and pace.

Finally, he just stands up and walks out of the room.

He wanders into the kitchen.

Clint is standing by the counter, tilting back a half-full coffee pot and pouring the coffee directly into his mouth.

He lowers the coffee pot as soon as he notices Sam. “Oh, hey,” he says. He looks down at the coffee pot, then back at Sam. “It would’ve just gone to waste,” he says.

As Sam walks back out of the kitchen, Clint asks, “Also, where is everybody?”

 

* * *

 

Sam goes back to the room that contains Bucky and Steve.

Time passes. Two of the most important people in Sam’s life lie unconscious in front of him.

Finally, Steve opens his eyes with a gasp. He sits up, shoulders heavy, and places his head in his hands. “I couldn’t do it,” he says.

Bucky is still out cold on the bed. Sam knows what Bucky looks like when he sleeps, and this isn’t it. That makes it worse.

“Let me try,” Sam says.

“Sam—” Steve sounds resigned.

“No. You might be our best shot because you’re closest to him, but nobody gets under his skin like I do. I gotta try.”

Wordlessly, Steve stands up. He glances one last time at Bucky, and then he stands aside.

Sam lies down on the vacated hospital bed. He stares up at Wanda as her hand lowers towards his head. Wooziness drifts over him in a reddish fog, and he closes his eyes.

When he opens them, he’s not in Wakanda anymore.

 

* * *

 

He’s standing on a street. The flavor of the air is different, but not entirely unfamiliar. He glances around, trying to orient himself. Takes in the clothing, the hairstyles, the buildings and the cars. Then it hits him.

Sam’s _here_. He’s in Bucky’s time. In _Steve’s_ time. The 40’s, back before the ice, before The Avengers, before any of it.

Sam wades through the crowd of people, looking for Bucky. Finally, he spots him. Standing over in the corner, in uniform. Sam walks over towards him.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Bucky says. He dismisses Sam with a glance down the length of his body. Sam looks down at himself, and realized he’s dressed to fit the part. He’s in uniform, too. A walking anachronism.

“Bucky—”

A gust of ice and snow slams into Sam, knocking him backward. He puts his hands in front of his face and squints through the wind.

He’s on a mountain. He’s on a tall, snowy mountain, and there’s something metal beneath his feet. Train tracks.

A train whistle blares, light cutting through the flurried air, and Sam looks up and—

“What are you doing here?” Bucky asks.

They’re back in New York. The train and the mountain are gone.

Dazed, Sam stares at Bucky. “I’m… here to help,” he says.

“Steve couldn’t do it,” Bucky says. “What makes you think you can?”

“Yeah, well, I—”

Sam’s arms are chained down, his body bare and cold. He struggles against the restraints, pulling and pulling, but the metal is unforgiving and unyielding.

There’s someone else in the room with him. A man in a face mask and a long coat. He turns around, and there is an _instrument_ in his hand. Sam really does not want to know what that instrument is used for. He strains to try and free himself, but all he can do is rub the welts deeper into his skin.

The man walks towards him. Nearer and nearer he comes.

Sam closes his eyes tries to lean away, his heart beating in his throat.

“It’s a fucking mess, isn’t it?” Bucky’s voice. The sounds of New York in the background.

Sam opens his eyes, and he’s in the city again, talking to Bucky.

“This is what they did to me,” Bucky says. “They took my mind—and turned it into _this_.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says.

“Yeah, well, me too,” Bucky says. “But sorry never fixes anything.”

There’s a gentle rumble beneath Sam’s feet. The biting cold is back, held at bay behind thin walls. It’s the train again, only this time, Sam’s on it. Bucky’s on it, too, leaning up against the wall.

“Anyways, it’s not going to work,” Bucky says.

“What’s not?”

“Reversing the brainwashing,” Bucky says. “Me and Steve, we—we found all of the trigger words.” Bucky’s gaze is cast away from Sam, towards the entrance of the train car. “You know what they did with them?” Bucky asks. He’s looking at Sam now, his eyes dark as glimmering coals. “They buried them in my memories.”

The scene shifts again. A leaf skitters across the pavement of the alleyway, the smell of refuge rank in the air.

Bucky is standing a couple feet away, staring at a garbage can. “So, I can’t erase the trigger words without…”

“...Without erasing the memories that they’re associated with,” Sam finishes, translating from Bucky’s silence.

“Yep.”

They both watch as the wind knocks a garbage can lid and sends it crashing to the ground.

Now that Bucky brought them up, Sam can _hear_ them. Words in Russian, whispered just beneath his conscious hearing. Repeated over and over, knit into the fabric of the scene.

“I mean, some of them are really shitty memories,” Bucky says. “But they’re _mine_.” He looks at Sam. “And besides, I don’t think this place can take much more of this.” He gestures to the environment around them. As he does, the setting changes, and they’re in a burning factory building. The smoke is heavy and thick in Sam’s lungs.

The floor gives out underneath his feet, and Sam starts to fall, but Bucky’s arm comes out and catches him, stabilizing him.

“It’s weird, seeing you here,” Bucky says. He loosens his grip on Sam, but doesn’t quite let go.

“What, instead of Steve?” Sam asks.

“Yeah.”

“He’s in a lot of these memories, isn’t he?” Sam asks.

“Yeah.”

The fire and the smoke and the creaking metal are gone. They’re standing in a pavilion, now, Bucky’s arm still wrapped around Sam. There are the sounds of people talking and laughing, the smell of fresh food drifting in the air.

Bucky lets go of Sam, stepping away.

“That’s the thing about memories, though,” Sam says. “They change.” He looks at Bucky. “Even when they stay the same, they change.”

A sharp, cold wind is tearing at Sam’s face, tugging at his clothes, and he feels like he’s going ninety miles an hour. They’re on the train again. It always comes back to this train. Sam hears the trigger word of this memory, repeated over and over, the intrusive sound of it bleeding through the roar of the wind drowning out his thoughts.

Bucky and Sam are standing in front of a gaping hole in the side of the moving train car, precariously perched on the edge. Bucky is looking down at the great white expanse of space beneath them.

“Maybe the trick isn’t trying to forget them,” Sam yells. “Maybe you just have to associate them with something else.”

“How the hell do I do that?” Bucky yells back.

“You’re already doing it,” Sam yells. “ _I’m_ here, aren’t I?”

Abruptly, the wind stills, and the blustering sound collapses into muffled quiet.

They’re in a house, standing on a couch cushion spread out on the floor.

“Like, the trigger words weren’t part of the original memories, right?” Sam says. “Those came later. And instead of trying to take them back out, how about we just change them? Make new memories out of them. Take away their power.”

Bucky looks skeptical. The line of his shoulders reveals a defeated man. “Sam…”

And then he falls.

The world is moving. White-tipped rock and dirt on all sides. It’s that same damn train again, only Sam is the only one who’s still on it. Bucky is dangling over the edge, gripping a metal bar tight in his hands.

In that singular, awful moment, Sam realizes why this memory matters so much to Bucky.

It’s the last time he saw him. Steve. The last moment in their shared past.

Bucky is staring up at Sam with wild desperation. He knows what’s coming, what _always_ comes after this.

“Trust me!” Sam yells down at him. “It’ll be okay!”

“Eventually, yeah, but—”

“No. It’ll be okay _now_ ,” Sam says. “You don’t have to keep reliving this.”

Bucky gazes up at him. The metal bar in his hands starts to loosen.

“I’m no super soldier, but there’s one thing that I can do that none of you can,” Sam says. He lets go of the walls of the train. Braces his feet on the ledge. “I’m the goddamn Falcon, and I can  _fly_.”

The side of the train buckles and cracks, and then Bucky’s gone.

As soon as the metal bar tears away in Bucky’s hands, Sam kicks off from the ledge. For a moment, he’s suspended in the air. Then he begins to plummet.

He doesn’t have his wings in this weirdo 40’s world of Bucky’s memories, but he took a leap of faith in the hopes that the universe would have him covered. It did.

Big, brown, feathery wings sprout from Sam’s back, catching the air.

 _Time to do what my namesake is famous for_ , Sam thinks. He tucks in his wings, and then he dives.

Sam reaches Bucky a couple meters before impact. Sam wraps both arms around him, and then sharply pulls up, feeling the dizzying rush of air and snow swirling around them.

Bucky is dazed. Frozen still and limp in Sam’s arms.

“See? What’d I tell you?” Sam says. “It doesn’t have to be like that. You’re not there anymore.”

Slowly, Bucky’s arms come up around Sam, clutching him tight.

By the time Sam slows to almost a hover, it has become an embrace. They stay like that, for a moment. Just holding onto each other, suspended miles above the ground.

“Ever flown like this before?” Sam asks.

“No,” Bucky says, his voice shaken.

“Well, hold on tight,” Sam says.

He takes them over the mountains, above snow-dusted trees and empty train tracks, beyond the reaches of Bucky’s memory.

He flies until he feels an aching tiredness in his wings, in his arms, and he knows that they’re going to have to wake up soon.

The trigger word follows them as an ongoing whisper in the wind, though it no longer has its ominous potency.

“It’s still there,” Bucky says. “The trigger word.”

“Yeah, but all it takes is one. Change just one, and they’ve lost their power over you,” Sam says.

Bucky’s head is resting on Sam’s shoulder, his arms firm around Sam. He is aware and attentive, but also relaxed. “How do I change it?” he asks.

“When you hear _freight car_ , think of me,” Sam murmurs. “Think of what it feels like to fly. Feel the exhilaration, the hairbrained, giddy rush of air. Everything else in the world is miles and decades away.”

Bucky is quiet. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll try it your way.”

“My way?”

“Winging it,” Bucky says.

Sam starts to laugh. Bucky is laughing, too, his body shaking with it. And that’s when Sam knows that they’re going to be fine. Even if this doesn’t work, they’ll find something that will.

Bucky lifts his head from Sam’s shoulder to look at him, and Sam opens his mouth, and then he wakes up.

 

* * *

 

Bright, artificial light is flooding into Sam’s eyes.

It takes him about a half second to get his bearings. He immediately turns to look at the hospital bed beside him, and there’s Bucky, gazing back at him.

Sam is aware that pretty much the whole team is there in that room with him, but in that moment, he only has eyes for Bucky. Bucky, who’s a little disheveled, but dashing as always, with a stupid soppy grin on his face that Sam would make fun of if he wasn’t wearing a smile that exactly matched it.

Bucky leans in at the same time that Sam leans in, and when their lips meet, the kiss tastes of wind and exhilaration.

They part reluctantly. The entire room is silent.

“Wow, I missed a lot,” says Clint, who'd just walked into the room.

Sam turns around slowly. And yep, everyone is there. Clint, standing by the door, balancing four mugs of coffee in his hands. Scott is caught mid-reach, one hand extended to take a coffee, his eyes on Sam and Bucky like everyone else’s. Wanda sits, exhausted, in the chair that someone had hastily pulled over for her, and T’Challa stands at the center of the room, right beside Steve.

Oh god.  _Steve_.

Sam and Bucky and everyone else are all looking at Steve. Steve is looking at Sam and Bucky. His expression is unreadable.

“Did it work?” T’Challa asks.

“What?” Sam says.

“Did you remove the brainwashing?”

“Um, maybe? I think?” Sam says. He glances at Bucky, then remembers they just _kissed in front of everybody_ , and he blushes and turns towards T’Challa, scratching the back of his head.

“If it didn’t work this time, we can try again later,” Bucky says, his voice uneven at first, but quickly stabilizing. He hops down from the bed.

Sam swings his legs over the side of his bed and stands up, too. He looks over at the door and starts planning an exit strategy.

Bucky, for his part, simply walks out.

Sam mutters a hasty excuse and walks out after him.

 

* * *

 

To his credit, Steve gives them some time. Sam knows they’re going to have to have The Conversation, but at least he gets a bit of a breather, first.

When it does happen, it’s in the movie room.

Sam and Bucky, at opposite ends of their couch. They’ve never sat that far apart on that couch before. Not even once. Already, Steve has put that space between them.

“So, you don’t actually hate each other,” Steve starts. He’d pulled up a chair so that the three of them form a jagged lopsided circle. A triangle, basically.

“Nope,” Sam says.

“Never have,” Bucky adds.

Steve lets out a breath. “Huh,” he says. He leans forward, then leans back, his hands shifting on his lap. “How… how long?”

Sam starts counting in his head. Then he stops, and his eyes travel down the length of the couch to rest on Bucky.

“Not sure,” Sam says. “Depends on what moment you start counting.”

“Movie night,” Bucky says quietly.

Yeah. Sam supposes you can start counting from there. But maybe it was even earlier, before they’d even met each other, when each of them had just been someone in Steve’s close orbit. They’ve always been bound to collide.

“We kept doing movie night after you stopped,” Sam says, by way of explanation. “And at some point, it just… happened.”

Bucky makes an explosion motion with his hand.

“And you’re in love with each other?” Steve asks. He asks it deliberately, like it’s a question he’d thought particularly long and hard about. Good, well-meaning, old-fashioned Steve.

Sam and Bucky have never said those words to each other. They’ve both _felt_ them, and they’ve exchanged other words that are almost as good, but never said it plain and genuine like that.

“Well, yeah,” Sam says. “I mean, I can’t speak for him—”

Bucky is nodding. He’s looking at Sam. “Yeah,” he says.

There is a warmth and lightness in Sam’s chest, at that. And okay, maybe Steve finding out is a good thing for them after all.

“So, you’re going steady?” Steve asks.

“Yes?” Sam says, exchanging another glance with Bucky. “I mean, we haven’t exactly talked about it, but—”

“Wait, do people still call it that?” Bucky asks.

“Sort of?” Sam says. “I mean, it’s not super common, but I hear the phrase get tossed around every so often.”

“Then yes,” Bucky says. “We’re going steady.”

The conversation lulls, and it threatens to get awkward. Steve looks contemplative, his gaze fixed somewhere in the distance between the two of them.

Finally, Steve says something. “This would be the part where I tell you not to hurt each other, or else, but even if things go south, I’ll still love both of you anyways,” he says, sighing. “So, please take care of each other, okay?”

“Will do,” Sam says, serious. “He’s a pain in my ass, but—”

“Well, more properly, he’s a pain in _my_ ass,” Bucky interrupts, smirking.

Sam glares at him. That’s a detail that Steve does _not_ need to know. Thankfully, Steve has no perceptible reaction to it, so maybe Sam is lucky, and Steve didn’t pick up on what Bucky had intimated.

“But I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of me,” Bucky says. “And I mean that.” He takes a breath. Looks at Steve, and then at Sam. “I’ve hurt enough people already.”

Sam can’t listen to Bucky say those words and keep the distance between them. So he scoots closer until Bucky is within reach again, then wraps an arm over his shoulders. Bucky leans into him, wordlessly accepting the gesture. It still feels weird to act this close with Steve watching, but maybe they’ll all just have to get used to it.

“We’ll figure it out,” Sam says.

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky says.

Steve looks at them. Then he turns around and looks at the movie screen. He turns back. “So… any good movies you’d recommend?” he asks.


End file.
